Saturday Morning Gaming: A year of Cyberpunk (plus some VR!)
Cyberpunk came out on December 9th, 2020. That’s almost a year ago.
As such, it’s fair to ask “what’s happened with it over the last year?”
Unfortunately, the answer is “a handful of major patches and a Johnny Silverhand skin.”
Now, my take on it at the time was “this is a game that is specifically calibrated to *ME*, and I can see how someone who isn’t pretty much just like me wouldn’t be impressed by it”. I was lucky, I had a machine built to play it, a mindset built to enjoy it, and a bunch of long weekends. Well, it’s been a year.
The main takeaway that I have is that I haven’t been tempted to pick it up again. There are games that I beat and go back to later. Cyberpunk ain’t one of them.
One of the things I was kind of hoping for was the mod community to make the game as awesome as it should have been out of the box and, I guess, it looks like they’ve been doing that… The top mods are UI improvements, quality of life game improvements (like, half of the mods at the top of the first page involve variations of the words “better” or “tweak”), and accessories for your character. (Were you waiting for an Iron Maiden tank top to become available before playing the game? Your wait is over!)
CD Projekt has delivered exactly *ONE* piece of DLC. And it’s a skin.
All in all, exceptionally disappointing and I’ve no reason to feel like I messed up in not replaying the game.
BUT.
The guy who made Red Dead Redemption 2 VR and Grand Theft Auto 3 VR mods has announced that he’s pretty much perfected his Cyberpunk 2077 VR mod and it’s going to come out next month.
Now, *THAT* might get me back into it. I mean, it probably won’t… but I will want to at least walk around the city a little bit.
(I’m still kind of surprised that there hasn’t been anything but patches from the company, though.)
So… what are you playing?
(Featured image is “Cyberpunk” by bloodlessbaron and is marked with CC PDM 1.0)
I started another Cyberpunk playthrough after the most recent major patch a couple of months ago, but paused about halfway through. I got a new PC recently on black Friday and spent a few hours just running around and enjoying the much better graphics from a higher-end machine.
I’m still pretty positive about the game (at least on PC), but it definitely fell short in many areas. But for now, I’m gonna wait until there is some “real” DLC before continuing and I hope CDPR learned some lessons from the fiasco they created.
The thing I’m playing now is the new Minecraft patch. I rarely stay super interested in Minecraft for very long, but the latest update is really good.Report
One thing that struck me while playing it was how obviously it was a 2015 game with 2020 graphics.Report
Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley.Report
Delightful. You’re digging it, then?Report
Well, yes, that’s the first step.Report
Well done.
I haven’t touched Stardew Valley in over three years and I’ve only got 90 minutes of play time invested in it. Maybe I should give it another go (after I’m finished with my current XCOM2 replay).Report
I started a NewGame+ playthrough of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I got about halfway through, then I decided to take a break and started playing Shin Megami Tensei V. It’s a cool game. The combat is kind of weird. If you hit a monster with an element that it is weak to, or if you get a critical, you can get an extra action. If you use something that it is immune to, you can lose actions. The same happens for the monsters when they attack you. This means that if you make the right choices, it’s usually easy to breeze through combat, but if you choose the wrong thing, it can spiral out of control and you can die to a trash mob. Unlike a lot of RPGs, You don’t have massive hit point inflation, which keeps things dangerous.
Other than the main character, your party is made up of demon’s you collect. However, unlike Pokemon, where you capture monsters in balls and force them to fight, you have to persuade the demons to join you, which often involves gifts of money, items, or even HP and MP.
I’m still pretty early into things, but it’s been about what I have expected so far.
Regarding Cyberpunk, could it be they are waiting to get everything properly patched before trying to sell a lot of DLC?Report
Properly patched? Hoo boy. I dunno.
As for selling DLC, I’m pretty sure that *I* will buy the eventual equivalent of Blood and Wine but they’ve promised that the first real* DLC is going to be free. (“Real” == Story Content and not just a particularly stylish skin.)
I kinda wish that they’d just give the tools to the mod community and say “make your own dumb DLC”.
When Neverwinter Nights did that, it only took six months for a story that was better than the original to make it out.Report
I never even finished the original Neverwinter Nights campaign. I got tired of “Go to hub. Go to three areas and fight three bosses/collect three items/whatever 3X. Go to next hub. Repeat.”
I had some great times on an RP server, though.Report
I can’t speak for consoles, but I think the game runs well on PC – at least it runs consistent with industry norms.
I do hope they iterate on the game, and not just with DLC. It’s a great and immersive world.Report